Turtle Power: A Steel Shield Build Guide (Patreon)

There are few sights on the showdown board more amusing than the sight of a survivor miniature carting around the oversized Gold Smoke Knight Lion Faced shield called the Steel Shield. Forged for the previous civilization of the Plain of Stone Faces by the Cyclops Knight, these shields are intended for larger individuals than the survivors and their tiny Scribe frames. Once upon a time, Lion people walked the world and they were bigger, stronger and just better than the Scribe's scribblings that meander about the darkness now.

The Steel Shield is one of the more commonly gained rare items as the Dark Blacksmith/Cyclops Knight has more than one event where it hands them out. The gaining of this shield is often a mixed bag; while there is no argument that the shield is unique and powerful. It is also very challenging to use correctly and it can cripple the survivor who receives it for the coming showdown. Leaving them struggling to do much, especially against the more mobile or erratic quarries.

However, once you are through that, because it is not cursed, you can move the Steel Shield off that survivor and then consider how best to make use of it. Which is what we are going to do here.

We'll start by breaking down its strengths:

• "Free"
• 6 Strength, which is high for a shield
• 6+ accuracy, also high for a shield
• Has a better defensive ability than block, which works alongside block
• Its defensive ability also doesn't require surging

Its downsides are:

• Rare item
• heavy keyword
• Irreplaceable
• No armor points as standard
• No affinities (often an issue with rare metal gear)
• -3 movement

Now, of these downsides; for the most part, are not that big of a deal. Rare items tend to often be Irreplaceable, and heavy gear is a negative we have been forced to live with despite the absurd drawbacks it has. So what really strikes home here is that final item on the list. -3 Movement.

Losing 3 movement from your survivor profile while holding this gear is a serious issue. Movement in Monster tends to be something of a logarithmic scale when you consider power levels. Lower movement is something that becomes a major issue. While you can cope with 4 movement most of the time, when you hit 3 movement it's magnitudes worse than 4 - sometimes even requiring Dash to allow you to get in range. 

In the opposite direction, higher movements give you this sudden breakpoint where you can Dash to completely remove the monster's attack (called a Dash-Cancel) because you're out of range while they chase clumsily after the clouds of dust you've left in your wake. This is the second part of the issue of low movement, not only do you struggle to position and get at the monster in the first place, but also you cannot dash-cancel. That can be a terrifying prospect when you consider the attack profiles of some of the higher level monsters.

That brings us to a summary wrap for the assessment on the shield, in order to use it we want to be able to leverage its ability as a good offensive shield with an incredible defensive ability we'll need to be capable of overcoming the huge limitations that the reduced movement incur. 

Improving Movement

There are several ways of improving movement on survivors, some we have control over, while others are semi-random in gaining. The single most impressive one is a disorder; Arithmophilia - the love of numbers (or a particular number).

This Dragon King disorder gives you the opposite of Guido Mista's condition (he's terrified of the number 4) and instead makes your survivor so obsessed with a particular number that no matter what modifiers you might suffer from, your survivor always has that movement (even if both their legs are severed). The hard part with this is when you get the disorder, you have to roll 1d5 - which means the survivor has an even chance of getting anything from 1 to 5 movement and not being able to fix that without curing the disorder. This is the kind of thing you may end up spending lifetime rerolls on, it's that bad. However, if you roll a 4 or 5 for this, they become a very valid candidate for using the Steel Shield instead of curing them.

Our next candidate is stronger and also has the joyous benefit of being 'tutorable' (gained via replicable means), that is the Spidicules Fighting Art Harvestman, that can be gained by male survivors through the Choriea innovation (one of the best innovations in the game). Harvestmen are one of only two types of male survivors worth taking out on hunts (all other hunters are best off as females or males with Unconscious Fighter) and they have some of the best DPS builds in the game.

Boom, +3 Movement, which will exactly cancel out the -3 movement from the shield. Who knew walking like a spider would let you wield a lion shield? I would have thought walking like an Egyptian would have worked better. Now you need to watch out for being knocked down with this, so investing in Leather Armor or a Feather Mantle (or getting the incredible Iron Will ability) will help a lot because they reduce the situations you'll get knocked down in (or give you immunity).

The final option we have is gear, many armor sets come with footwear that increases your movement or allows you to move in alternative fashions. The iconic line up is:

This means that White Lion, Phoenix, Dragon or Brawler Armor are viable options because they all use these pieces of footwear. However, most note should be paid to Dragon, because it gives the most reliable +2 movement bonus and the armor set ability of Leap gives an alternative way of moving and attacking that ignores movement value (if you are stacking this with Harvestman). Green Armor and Phoenix Armor have huge movement attacks in straight lines - however they care about your movement value and if you're planning to use them you're better off putting them together with Harvestman and a Sharp weapon rather than combining them with a Steel Shield which will reduce their potency.

Now we're not going to go into example builds this time for one reason. In essence they all end up being the same (unless you get Harvestman). You pick the armor set you want to use: Leather, Dragon, Phoenix. You add Harvestman to the mix, then you stack as much +evasion gear as possible and run the shield either as a primary offensive weapon or as a secondary defensive one. 

If you're looking at White Lion, that's something you're not going to be able to keep viable for a long time. White Lion falls off very quickly and it should be avoided. In fact, the only reason to do this is if you got an early Steel Shield and you're seeking to train up Shield Mastery asap and you're very resource rich. In that situation; you might be able to afford this, but White Lion armor is ridiculously expensive for something that's not better than Rawhide or Leather. So you might be better off just rushing for Leather - I am hopeful that CoD or 1.6 fixes the White Lion armor a bit, all it needs is a bit more armor to bring it on par with leather's points (resource wise White Lion should sit between Rawhide and Leather, but be closer to leather).

So, my main recommendation for a build is Harvestman + Dragon Armor + Steel Shield + Monster Grease + Lantern Glaive; as that's the single most powerful set of options in my opinion, Phoenix becomes a lot harder to work on because you need to be mindful of its poor affinities and insanity needs. If you stop being insane, then you'll lose access to the +2 movement, this means you might not want to have the Plackart activated. Phoenix does have more evasion built into its design, so it is a close second. Leather Armor is the third place choice, its movement isn't as powerful as the other two, but it is cheaper and doesn't require hunting a Node 3 monster.